Cole Hamels looks to continue his stellar Spring in a match-up against the Dominican Republic’s best. It is a shame that this one isn’t on TV as the Dominican’s line-up Hamels will likely be matched up against may contain Jose Reyes, Hanley Ramirez, Carlos Santana, and Robinson Cano in what will likely be some awesome match-ups.

Recommended for you

72 Comments

Ken Bland

March 5, 2013 at 12:17 pm

Bueno.

There might be a typo in the Spanish portion of the post.

It says “no es en televisión”, but MLB.com is inviting folks to tune in and watch this one, one of several exhibitions between WBC entries, and MLB clubs, or in the case of the Marlins, MLB immitators (I think the Fish might finish ahead of the Mets this year, but that’s besides the point. The Fish hook up with Venezuela.

TV tomorrow, when Stras hooks up with Doc at least.

Anyway, we’ll know in under an hour, but if anyone else has the MLB.com package, there appears to still be a chance of pictures accompanying the descriptions and accounts of the game.

The guide says it’s on MLB network here in Baltimore, but black out locally. If there is no local broadcast, then maybe this one will be in spanish. I guess it couldn’t be any worse than listening to Sarge butcher the english language.

I got connected on the video (preliminary screen, so that should validate what the guide said about just being blacked out in Philly. Should be a fun ballgame. Dominican lineup is excellent 1-5 at a minimum. Good test for Cole.

I know, I wondered what feed they’d be picking up. I know this happens withradio in the spring where Franzke and LAdo the game just over MLB.com, but I don’t recall the announcers just doing the game for MLB.com TV. By the way, Gregg Murphy did 2 innings of pbp on radio yesterday. I wasn’t paying close attention, but he seemed to sound okay.

Kratz had Bonifacio dead to rights at 2B yesterday but Cole couldn’t hold the ball… then, he threw a wet bar of soap to third base (the ball landed between the third baseman and the shortstop, who as playing up the middle) which scored Bonifacio. Point being… he should have had one caught stealing yesteray and could have had another if he had gripped a seam (there could be more like that). I think Kratz has a great arm… shouldn’t be a problem.

i’m sure it’s happened, but I don’t remember the last time Cole got beat so bad when it had so little to do with beating himself. Like that first home game against the Mets a year or two back (or any game against the Mets, in his case), he just had one of those games. He’s not beating himself today. But boy, is he getting beat.

I figure one more startfor all the starters before we look to see them turn it up a notch to be ready by Opening Day. So net time out, we’ll look for performance from Cole.

He turns 27 in July, so I don’t know about the “work in progress” part. Most people outside of Philly solely view Ruf as minor league inventory. He really has too many holes in his game to be much more than that.

This lineup today is so much more formidable. Obviously, this could be a poor sense, but I expect Hamels and Halladay to pitch real well against the Braves those first two games. Cliff, I could see pitching into what they do best, their power, but that lineup in Atlanta could be very streaky, and agauinst good pitching reallyt raise some questions.

We’ll see if I uphold my contrarian predictor rep, but that’s how I read the liklihood.

This is the sort of game that sperates the men from the boys, or in the case of Phillies nNation, the women from the girls in the broadcast booth. We know from more recent experiences, and far too many examples from only a year ago how Franzke and LA were worth hanging with in a boring, or lost cause (see V the Dodgers in June) because of the entertainment value. Guess where they learned, or certainly developed that skill?

The other end of the spectrum is listening to Sarge practice English as a Second at Best Language along with the everpopular T Mac. I’ve taken advantage of the opportunity to asses the way Sarge talks to the viewership like it’s the first game they ever watched. He must assume the audience is different every night. But I forget how he is on doubleheaders. I wonder if his “analysis” is way more complex since the audience has seen a ghame previously. I’d like to listen to Sarge broadcast a game to arc. That’d be interesting. Probably not a good idea. Arc don’t like condascending, I forgot about that.

I’m laughing like crazy at the thought of Arc and Sarge in the same sentence or thought. I don’t know what Arc looks like or what he sounds like but I can only imagine what a dialogue between them would be like.

Think of the old Gleason skit on his Saturday night show with Frank Fontaine as Crazy Joe Guggenheim, and Mr. Donahee in the background. Maybe you’re too young to remember, but that’d be about as good a comp as I can draw for you.

Next week, after Dominicana finishes scoring, maybe we’ll work on a petition to have arc replace whoever the hell they decide on as the female host for Phillies Nation tv.

Glad you rmember that top flight entertainment, because the rare footage on You Tube really does the skit zero justice. Jackie and Art is rightfully remembered as one of the great tag teams of all time, right up there with Babe and Gahrig, but he and Frank Fontaine did a wonderful job together. It’s a little weird how at the age we were watching them, the perspective was so much different than looking back on them now with appreciation.

lets see; ken bland, Chuck a, ken bland, chuck a, ken bland, ken bland, chuck a and lefty. Thank God Phillies fandom only has 8 of you, or at least a couple of your own self replications, and youre all confined to this website. Is there anything more pitiful than a bunch of self righteous jerks who think they know all there is about a sport which is determined by 75% chance?
But Im glad you pn groupies are always thinking about me, even when im nowhere near a cpu.
I also love the way you spun that good old fashioned a** whipping from the DR. Get used to it, its just what uncle Rubin has bought you.

Ruf went 0 for 4 with three strikeouts. The game was not an official Grapefruit League contest, so statistics did not count. In eight official games, Ruf is hitting .130 (3 for 23) with a .286 on-base percentage and a .174 slugging percentage.

What Phillies officials cannot ignore is Ruf’s defensive shortcomings in leftfield. He misplayed a catchable ball that went for a double in Tuesday’s game. He has had several misplays in leftfield this spring. Ruf, 26, is a lifelong first baseman trying to make the conversion to left field.

Just so you know, over the course of the winter, I particpated in the Can You Top This fun and frolic by predicting Ruf would smack 56 rookie himeruns. Ny feelings were crushed when Chuck A came along and was thinking Roger Maris when he predicted Ruf would visit Planet Maris and rip 61 adioses. Lefty, seeing other optimists in the crowd decided Sosa’s 66 was “guaranteed.”

I agree with you that the other two, as evidenced by their outrageousness belong in the looney bin, and accept my props for the most reasonable guess on what Rufesque standards should be defined as.

You and I are probably the only two peeps around here that know what the hell’s going on.

Why thank you, Ken…the looney bin for me for sure. You’re saying it confirms what I already suspected about myself. And I accept my fate with dignity and honor. And just to seal the deal I say Darin Ruf for 85 jacks this season. Hey Arc…. How do you like THEM apples??

ESPN:
“Amaro’s almost certainly more optimistic than the rest of the world about his team’s chances, banking on not only the veterans but also on new, younger additions to the lineup like Darin Ruf, Ben Revere, and Domonic Brown.3 It’s possible that ownership wants no part of rebuilding, not with fans flocking to the ballpark and the afterglow of NL East dominance still in effect. Ryan Howard’s launching majestic homers again this spring.4 The Phillies even have the National League’s second-easiest early-season schedule, which could lead to a hot start and a stronger urge to add to what the team has, rather than subtract.

The most likely scenario probably involves a path somewhere in between blowing it all up and doing nothing at all. If Utley can’t stay healthy again this year, the Phillies can just let him walk next winter and look for a younger replacement. There’s a good chance Rollins won’t be back after 2014, no matter what the rest of the team looks like. Carrying Halladay, Lee, and Cole Hamels for the next few years isn’t likely to happen, and we should probably expect one of the three to be gone by next spring, whether by trade or with Halladay pursuing free-agent dreams somewhere else.

Just don’t count on those half-measures bearing fruit anytime soon. The Phillies own one of baseball’s worst farm systems, with their best talent likely three or four years away and none of those players anything close to a sure thing. They owe $104.5 million to just six players for 2014, and four of those six (Howard, Rollins, Jonathan Papelbon, and Mike Adams) might be no better than two-win players by that point. And the Nationals have built a team that has the rare combination of youth and elite talent, the kind that makes you wonder if the rest of the division could be fighting for wild-card scraps.

It might not take another 28 years5 for Philadelphia to host a parade. But it could be a while … no matter what becomes of Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins, and the rest of this once-unbeatable team”.

That was some outstanding stuff. Jonah Keri wrote the piece over at Grantland, and you credit the world wide leader with the piece, which, I might add, ain’t winning no points for originality. And guess what, sports fans? There’s no breaking news in the piece through Ruben’s eyes, either.

Perhaps you think CBS News used to sign off it’s nightly newscast with pleasantries such as
“Good night, Chet, good night, David, and good night for NBC News.

Thank you for apparently describing me as a member of the self righteous jerks club. I’ve never been one to not appreciate compliments. Rock and roll.

Screw ESPN. those bandwagon jumping whores are high on the nats for what reason? sure they are young and have talent, but havent won a playoff series yet. Boston sucks, so i guess they have to pick another darling to stroke everyday.

I hate the way espn is perpetually on its knees for Boston. it sickens me. They literally have them on the headlines every day, while the Phils in 2011 most wins in baseball made headlines maybe 4 times that whole season.

I think it has to do a lot with the attitude of a segmentation of the Philadelphia fan base. There has always been this childish cliquish behavior amongst some of our fans. The fanaticism and closed mindedness borders on absurdity. Its the same attitude of the Philly nimbys. The reason its so hard to make this a world class city, and the reason why Trump said he’ll never do business here again. The underdog, factory worker small rust belt ethos still pervades. You can see this clearly in some of the posters who get highly upset toward any poster who doesn’t agree with their positions. However, thankfully, I think this behavior strongly correlates with lack of education for the most part. I can guarantee those posters who are highly defensive of a sports team, and spend time on message boards quibbling on a blog have not had more than 2 years of college, and that would most certainly be a city or state college, and they would have certainly avg. around 2.0 gpa.

I was the first one to always defend this cities reputation, and for the most part I find any negativity attributed to us to be unfounded. But it seems like its always the few close minded, territorial jerks who are the loudest. When these types of people learn to communicate in more mature fashion, I think our national image will change. Thankfully there are only a few who pledge allegiance to baseball with the majority belonging to the football arena.

How the hell do I get espn to stop deep throating the Redsox? For, all those who want to know the bane of my existence; it is espns biased coverage of Baseball.

But, I dont think this article was necessarily biased, or mean spirited towards the phillies. I think it does however underscore many of the points I have tried to make. Either blow up the team now, or go all out. I think the middle road Amaro is taking is in pretext to his failed attempt at greatness.

Watching spring training for me is like spending all of my money on a chick, being faithful in our relationship while professing my love to her, to then have her cheat on me and then tell me shes sorry.

ST to me is like hearing Amaro tell me hes sorry for his judgements which didnt pan out.

Arc, I disagree with you on the premise that you have to go all out or blow up the team… the pitching that we have right now is good enough to earn a wild card berth and win in the postseason… I don’t care how we get in, we just have to get in. If you to look at recent history, 13 of the past 16 World Series match ups have included a Wild Card team… the most important thing is getting in and being healthy. If Lee/Halladay and Hamels are healthy, we’ll be fine. Honestly, I couldn’t care less if we win the division, I just want to see us get into the postseason healthy and hopefully playing well. If a few guys are seeing the ball well in September, we can win the whole thing without having the best team on paper. We’re better right now without having spent a lot of money in free agency than we were last year because we’re healthier. We’re better right now because we have something to prove.

Right now, Vegas odds have the Phillies at 14/1 odds of winning a World Series, which is fouth best in the NL behind the Dodgers (7/1), Nationals (8/1) and Reds (12/1). That doesn’t mean much but it means we should be in contention. We still own five of the past six NL East titles… this team is still capable of winning now. I don’t really care about the farm… I want a team that emphasizes winning. I want a team that is willing to invest in fielding a winning ball club.

Curious, what judgments would you say didn’t pan out and are you basing your opinion on one abysmal season? Ryan Howard… top 10 in MVP voting every year except last year – a mulligan year, in my opinion (only a bad judgment if he doesn’t play well this year, which he will). Roy Halladay? Cy Winner… 20, 17, 21, 19, 11 (his win totals by year). Cliff Lee? Chase Utley? Jimmy Rollins? Which of those moves would you NOT have made and would you have had more success not making them? Remember, 5 out of the last 6 NLE pennants are hanging at CBP… if you’re going to criticize Rube for making moves, you have to tell us what moves you would have made and why you think the moves he made haven’t panned out.

Hey Chuck,
First, its great to have a fellow Phillies fan who knows how to respectfully disagree.

Now point #1 my premise is based on the premise that the Phillies have one of the largest market/turnouts in the MLB. So, what does this mean? it means 2 things. 1) it means the Phillies have the revenue to handle superstar contracts, and if worst comes to worst handle any penalites for going over the luxury threshold. 2) It seems intuitive that It hurts our market/turn out more when our team disappoints. Now, I understand its hard for the die hard Phillies fans to sympathize with the fair weather fan, but it is exactly these fans who fill CBP to capacity among contributing to other streams of revenue. So, based on this premise i’m more inclined to see our club go the Angels, Dodgers route, win or lose. Is this the most strategically sound to win the WS? probably not, but would you rather have a superstar stacked line up and rotation and lose, or a mediocre lineup/rotation and lose? I’d rather see the former than latter.
#2 You said: “Roy Halladay? Cy Winner… 20, 17, 21, 19, 11 (his win totals by year). Cliff Lee? Chase Utley? Jimmy Rollins? Which of those moves would you NOT have made and would you have had more success not making them?” Ironically, the move I most blame Amaro for are the players you left out, more specifically; Ibanez, and Polanco, Pence, Revere, and Young.
Obviously, Holliday, Beltre, Beltran, Upton, and Frandsen. These are not hindsight selections, we all can see at the time these were better players; more expensive in some cases? yes, but better.

#3) You said: “We’re better right now without having spent a lot of money in free agency than we were last year because we’re healthier.” Not necessarily. First, we do not know the potential health of this team over the course of the next 162 games. Also, I would agrue that we’re actually worse because every player is 162 +/- games older. Our third base and RF are ?, and our LF is static if not worse.

I know I sound very pessimistic, but I think my analysis is pretty conservative.

#4)You said: “The year before that, we won more games than any other team in baseball and lost to a Giants team that had better pitching (which is why we went out and got Cliff Lee, a move everyone agrees with)”. Actually, we pitched better in that series. The Phils posted a 2.91 ERA vs. the Giants 3.06. The difference in that series was the Giants got about 7 more hits. (I guess that’s some kind of negative feedback loop or something.) So, doing a avg. stat comparison 2 players on the Phils from 2009-2010 were static; Howard and Werth. 3 players had a decrease in production, while 2 players had an increase. So, it doesnt seem like much a manager needed to do.Amaro could have gone pitching or batting. However, I think his signings at LF and 3rd base came back to haunt him. So, then in 2009-10 my options offensively to fill would have consisted of these options.
First, LF: Matt Holliday age 29, 7/120mil, Jayson Bay 4/66mil, Raul Ibanez age 37, 3yr/30mil.
Next, 2010 -3rd base: Juan Uribe age 31, 3 yr 21mil, Adrian Beltre age, 31 1yr 10mil, Placido Polanco age 35, 3 yr 18mil.

This is a loaded post… I’ll do my best to reply as short-winded as possible.

I agree with you that we, as fans, should not care about the luxury tax threshold… if we want our team to keep going for it, we shouldn’t be afraid of those things. We don’t control the budget and nor should we care about it. Would I have loved to see us go out and get Josh Hamilton? Absolutely… would that have been the right move to make? I don’t know for sure but I think he’d be a better right fielder for us than Delmon Young. Would that hurt us down the road? Maybe but ain’t nobody got time for that. That being said, I like the moves we did make… I like Revere a lot. I like Michael Young. I like the fact that we’re going to give Dom Brown a chance to play every day.

Hindsight being 20/20, Matt Holliday and Adrian Beltre would have been great BUT Raul Ibanez and Placido Polanco were serviceable moves that allowed us to maintain flexibility to make other moves… again, we won more games than any other team in baseball in 2010 and 2011. Would we have won more games with Holliday and Beltre? Maybe… but maybe not. Maybe we wouldn’t have had the money to get Cliff Lee and this is where it’s hard because although you shouldn’t care about numbers as a fan, you have to understand that there’s a budget.

I think we’re better this year because we can’t be less healthy than we were last year… that’s not possible. We had three starting pitchers spend time on the shelf and only three position players started more than 100 games in 2012 (JMJ, Pence and Rollins)… our bullpen was ravaged and realistically, winning 81 games is sort of remarkable considering all that. It’s a mulligan year… if we don’t have a better record in 2013 than we did in 2012, I’ll buy you a Phillies Nation t-shirt.

You seem to be pretty pro-Frandsen. He’s a nice player but he’s not going to hit .338 again like he did last year. He’s having a nice spring but I think his ceiling is spot filling and hitting off the bench… Michael Young is the starting third baseman and there’s not even a question there.

What players would you have held onto that would be making any difference on the farm or at the big league level rihgt now? Kyle Drabek? Michael Taylor? JA Happ? Carlos Carrasco? Jason Donald? Lou Marson? Travis D’Arnaud? Anthony Gose? Jonathan Singleton? I’m sure I’m missing some names… there’s no one out there that gives me seller’s remorse.

Jumping-in late… but toThe Original Chuck P.. I agree with you to a degree. The Phillies have made trades that haven’t hurt them to this point – though that’s not to say these moves won’t hurt in the future .

If we still had Gose – maybe we don’t trade for Revere .. maybe we keep Worley and our staff looks better?

It would be nice to still have Singleton, Cosart, D’Arnaud, and Bonilla …

but it’s also nice that we have Aumonte, Martin, and Tommy Joseph … I’m still confused as to why Nate Schierholtz was let go ….but overall, the Phillies have been hurt by the injury bug the past few years- not because they traded anything from the farm

I’m very shortsighted moving forward and more forgiving looking back. The Phillies were hurt by the injury bug LAST year… two years ago, we won more games than any other team in baseball. We didn’t win the big prize but that wasn’t a result of having a bad team – we played our hand wrong. We beat the Braves out of the postseason and allowed the red hot Cardinals to play their way in. The year before that, we won more games than any other team in baseball and lost to a Giants team that had better pitching (which is why we went out and got Cliff Lee, a move everyone agrees with). The injury bug bit us last year… it happens… but I don’t see why anyone would not be excited about this team. Moving forward, you’re right in saying that these moves MIGHT hurt in the future but we wouldn’t be the team we are (and the team we have been) if we didn’t have a GM that was willing to pull the trigger on big moves at the expense of the farm. I don’t want to rebuild… I would rather see us keep moving forward.

Good game today. Tommy Joseph is killing it… Brown is 2/3 with a double… Howard has another RBI… and I’m feeling good about Michael Young. He doesn’t have a great batting line but he does have 7 RBI and only 2 strikeouts to his name.